


Cloudberry Wine

by guileheroine



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Ice Skating, Nature, New Relationship, Reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-21
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:42:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22341256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/guileheroine/pseuds/guileheroine
Relationships: Elsa/Honeymaren (Disney)
Comments: 4
Kudos: 24
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Cloudberry Wine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Katherine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Katherine/gifts).



Elsa’s shoulders had scrunched when Honeymaren grabbed her arm, her hand stilled on its way to her mouth with a plump clump of cloudberry. 

“Hey. Elsa! Let’s skate on the Glass Lake before we go back for supper… You haven’t been there before, have you?”

Honeymaren had been thinking that it was her turn to show Elsa something new. She hadn’t done that in some time because they had been away in the kingdom for quite a while. And the thought nagged all the more because Elsa had (sometimes grudgingly) introduced her to as many Arendellian quirks as her delight could be mustered for while they were down south.

That’s how they had ended up ducking and scrambling through the Forest instead of homeward, buoyed from a fruitful and leisurely berry pick. Gasping when the valley materialised sudden and wide, the lake a flat, pure crystal pressed in the middle. Then staggering over the mossy decline, the bulging sacks of berries knocking their hips, leaping strides under the bright white sunlight. 

Ever since they returned from Arendelle and Queen Anna’s wedding, all the usual routines have felt that much more incredible. Charged with keen new magic - even more so than they normally were, considering that a baseline enchantment was granted to be woven through with the ins and outs of life here, ever since the day the former Queen of Arendelle first followed her call into Northuldra.

Honeymaren doesn’t think she ever felt out of place here, but that’s quite different to not sticking out. And  _ did  _ Elsa stick out. She drew her gaze, and inevitably her feet - so that Honeymaren would find herself shoving her half-stripped basket of firewood into Ryder’s arms in order to go join her; pulling one of the rapt children onto her knee as they watched her illustrate her tales with frosty sculptures. When she struggled to find the best words before her engrossed audience, the sculptures would express it just fine, and it would give her a moment to find Honeymaren with her warm eyes above the heads of the gaping children. 

Day by day as her presence amongst the Northuldra shed its novelty, it felt as though the sharp magic had turned inward instead, thick between the two of them, and slowly concentrating. Maybe it had taken Arendellian nonchalance for Elsa’s powers for  _ all  _ that magic to retreat between them, into the castle and the room they always seemed to end up curled together in. Into the first delicate kiss, the gloomy morning after Anna and Kristoff’s crazy reception party. Tonight, as Elsa lays against her by the fire, heavy with cloudberry wine, the same quiet satisfaction endures.

For all that Elsa had been magnificent on the lake on her self-sculpted skates of ice, her kiss was still rather graceless. Never more so than as they caught their breath on the bank afterwards. 

“They seem to fit pretty well, don’t you think? Hmm. I might angle the blade if you want to spin more,” she had said, while Honeymaren gulped the breath her kiss had forestalled. She had produced Honeymaren a pair of skates for the first time, owing to the spontaneity of their trip. 

The cloudberries were needed for the wine they always made around midsummer, in time for the festival. But a handful could definitely be spared, and Honeymaren carefully scooped one out of her sack as she examined her feet. The sun harshly glinted off the skates, but not a bead melted off them.

“Make them sharper. Let me cut through the ice. I’m sure your Fifth Spirit privileges could work something spectacular with that disaster. Right?” Honeymaren grinned, slicing the blades together so that the shards of ice sparked off.

“Maren!” Elsa frowned, guileless. A queen of Arendelle - even a  _ former  _ one shed of all her trappings - might need a while yet to warm to a Northuldra sense of humour.

After that they had plucked the berries off their stalks and fed themselves, and each other once or twice. 

“This is my favourite fruit.”

“Really? I don’t think I ever ate much fruit.”

“But I thought they have stuff from everywhere in the castle.”

“Eeh.”

Under the glaring sun, the sweaty discomfort brought on by the whirl on the lake didn’t abate. She could stand it as long as she had the berries to enjoy. 

Now, hours later, with Elsa’s head in her lap, Honeymaren is quite grateful for the evening blaze. The firelight casts shadows upon her ashy hair, crimped from the braid Honeymaren has just combed out with her fingers. A stark difference from the way it shone under the unfiltered sunlight, the Fifth Spirit in all her elemental glory.

She didn’t struggle to cool down at all. When she learnt the opposite of Honeymaren, she had hooded her sharp eyes deliciously, with a gentle cough.

“Oh, uh. I can fix that.”

And before she knew it, the hairs on Honeymaren’s arms were upright beneath the snug fur - it felt like the result of her surprise as much as the actual drop in body temperature. She had turned to Elsa, whose face was crossed by the shadow of an ancient anxiety - but only as a strange afterthought, a momentary blip on her focused features. (She’s not going to freeze Honeymaren, it’s just that she could have, once.) All it meant to them now was that something about her - Honeymaren - lit the flicker of vulnerability in Elsa.

It could have been a sobering thought for them both, but it’s mostly an enthralling one.

“Thank you,” Honeymaren had giggled, “but I think now I need that wine to warm me up already.” 

Elsa had been surprised that you could make wine from cloudberries. When they returned, she joined the process keenly, wiping golden juice onto the apron they gave her. Afterwards, someone found a bottle from last year for her to try. She tried nearly the whole of it, sip by sip over supper, before curling asleep into Honeymaren as soon as she had felt the first tickle of the fire. Normally there is nothing she can be plied with like sweet cloudberry wine, but Honeymaren let Elsa drink it all tonight.

Dozing, she slips her hand back through the pale hair, wondering how many more of her life’s pleasures Elsa will leave her indelible mark on.

  
  



End file.
